It started, once upon a time, with Ned Stark finding a litter of orphaned dire wolf cubs, with Robert Baratheon riding for Winterfell, with Ned becoming Hand of the King in the viper's pit that was King's Landing.

It restarted like this:

Sansa bolted upright in her bed, hand flying to her throat as she gasped for breath. There had been cold hands around her throat only seconds ago, closing tight –

Sister, a voice whispered.

"Bran?" she gasped, staring around the almost familiar room wildly.

It took all the magic that I possess to do this; to fling you back to the beginning. There will not be another chance. Westeros must face the Others united. I know that you are capable of this. Good luck, sister.

"Bran," she whispered. He did not respond. "Bran!" Only silence met her.

Sansa threw the covers back and ran to the hallways. It was Winterfell, she realised that now – Winterfell, that had burnt under the Golden Company's torches, as Jon and Daenerys fought to stop the wights' advance on Winterfell just north of the castle.

She flew into her chambers, slamming the door behind her. She leant against it and gulped in a few desperate breaths of air.

In the bed, a figure bolted upright. Ramsay, she thought, hysterically. It's Ramsay, he's come for me, he's come –

"Sansa?" asked her father, as Catelyn sat up next to him. "What's wrong?"

Sansa stared at them, shaking her head slightly. It couldn't be them. How could it be them?

Before she could even begin to conjure a response, she was knocked aside as the door slammed open again and Arya barrelled into the room.

"Sansa, I need you!" cried Arya, before stopping abruptly at the sight in the bed.

"Arya?" asked Catelyn.

Sansa, I need you. Arya had been looking for her. This, Sansa could handle. "Arya?"

"I just heard…" Arya's voice stumbled as she continued to stare, thunderstruck, at their parents. "I heard Bran. In my head. I need your help. He told me -"

"That Westeros needs to stand united and that this was our last chance," finished Sansa. Arya jerked her head around to look at Sansa. "I heard him. He must have been talking to both of us."

"He only called me sister," whispered Arya.

"Girls!" interrupted Catelyn. "What is going on?"

"Do you think this is real?" asked Sansa. "Do you think he's really capable of pushing us back?"

Slowly, Arya nodded. "He said that he was the one to make Hodor, Hodor," she said. "He told me when I asked him what the Three Eyed Raven could do. He skinchanged into Hodor in the past."

Sansa turned to look at her parents, who were watching her and Arya worriedly. "Mother," she said, her voice breaking. "Father."

Arya moved first, throwing herself on to the bed and her arms around Ned. Sansa picked up her skirts and ran to the other side of the bed, flinging herself into her mother's arms.

Catelyn stroked Sansa's hair carefully, and Sansa felt a sob well up inside her. "Mother," she whispered, snuggling deeper into Catelyn's hug.

"Girls," said Ned. "What on earth is going on?"

Sansa squeezed her eyes shut to keep the tears from leaking out, not knowing how to begin answering that question. "Nightmare," mumbled Arya after a long, silent moment.

Sansa felt her breath slowly evening out. She could tell that her parents were trading worried looks above her and Arya's heads. Sansa met Arya's eyes from across the bed. As she watched, Arya's eyes wet eyes slowly solidified into steely determination. Sansa nodded slightly, minutely enough that Catelyn wouldn't notice.

They were going to fix everything.

Sansa woke, more peacefully than she had the night before, slowly blinking her bleary eyes open. Arya was curled up next to her, the both of them cocooned between their parents. Sansa reached out and touched her sister's shoulder gently, who jerked awake instantly at the touch. Sansa had only a moment to register the panic in Arya's grey eyes before Arya's eyes settled on Sansa and she relaxed.

"We need to talk," whispered Sansa. Arya nodded in response and picked herself up, silently and smoothly, and crept off the bed. Sansa couldn't help feeling like a clumsy horse as she followed Arya out into the hallway.

As Sansa eased the door closed behind them, Arya demanded, "What exactly did Bran say to you?"

Sansa glanced both ways down the hall to check there was no one around to overhear. Arya rolled her eyes at Sansa and crossed her arms impatiently. "He said that he used all of his magic to give us one last chance, and that he knew I was capable of keeping Westeros strong and united," answered Sansa. "Was it the same to you? The exact same?"

Arya pushed her hair – so much longer than she had worn it only last night – out of her face and nodded. "The exact same." She looked up at Sansa. "We can save Father and Mother and Robb and Rickon."

"We can save everyone," agreed Sansa. "They're alive, now. They're all alive…" She trailed off, her breath quickening. Joffrey. Ramsay. Petyr.

"We can win the war before it even begins!" said Arya, her voice sounding tinny and distant. Joffrey. Ramsay. Petyr. Ramsay. Joffrey. Gods, oh Gods.

I need to be brave. I need to be brave like my lady mother. Like Robb. Like Arya. Ramsay, Joffrey, Petyr. Ramsay Joffrey Petyr -

"Sansa? Sansa, can you hear me?" Arya's voice broke through to Sansa. Sansa blinked, and Arya was suddenly right in front of her, hovering anxiously. As Sansa focused on her, Arya's face grew hard. "We'll kill them, Sansa. We'll kill each and everyone of them. Joffrey, Cersei, Illyn Payne -"

Ramsay, Joffrey, Petyr.

"Ramsay," whispered Sansa, her voice strangely hoarse. "Ramsay Bolton. We kill him first."

Arya grabbed Sansa's shoulders and squeezed them. "Ramsay Bolton," she repeated. "He'll be at the top of my list."

Sansa grasped for a way to pull herself out of the spiral. "The war," she remembered. "We need to stop the war. We need to stop Littlefinger before he can start it."

Arya nodded. "I can take care of that."

"No!" Sansa's voice rang through the hallway, and she desperately tried to reign her runaway emotions back in. "He'll already have his fingers in so many pies. We can't risk the power vacuum just killing him will create."

Footsteps sounded from further down the corridor and Arya grabbed Sansa by the wrist roughly and pulled her down the hall. "We need to go somewhere we won't be disturbed," Arya said through gritted teeth.

"You never know who's a little bird," Sansa agreed faintly. She realised where Arya was taking her within only a few turns, and soon enough they spilled into the Godswood. Sansa nestled herself in the roots of the heart tree. There was a slight chill in the air, but Sansa barely noticed it; it was nothing compared to the bone-chilling cold she had felt in the crypts, the kind of cold that made you want to lie down and never get up again. Like a million pinpricks of ice forcing their way under her skin, so cold they burned. And then there had been the hands wrapping around her throat…

Sansa shivered, and pulled her shawl a little tighter around her shoulders.

Arya knelt in front of Sansa. "We can't leave Littlefinger alive," she said, breaking the silence they had kept since they fled from the servant's footsteps. "He caused everything. He's the reason Father died. Why are you protecting him?" She hurled the words at Sansa like an accusation.

Sansa took a deep breath and counted to three. She dug her fingers into the earth, relishing the grass tickling at her palms and the cool, damp earth getting under her nails. When she felt her breathing return to some semblance of normal, she replied, "He's been building towards this for years. He's manipulated Aunt Lysa; he's wormed himself into the Small Council and has the whole economy of the Seven Kingdoms ready to collapse. His aim is chaos: he wants to use it as a ladder for himself, but what he's created won't disappear just because he has."

"So we just leave him there?" asked Arya incredulously.

"I can handle Petyr," said Sansa, firmly. Her voice didn't shake, and she kept her hands resting in her lap so that they couldn't give her away.

Arya shook her head. "You're playing with fire," she warned.

Sansa lifted her chin. "Winter is coming. Maybe we need a little fire." Arya glared at her, crossing her arms across her chest. Sansa softened slightly, and said, "We don't even know how long we are. We can plan. We know what Joffrey's like better than maybe anybody else; we know what Littlefinger is; we even know about how the Lannisters will wage the war, if it comes to that. We know Daenerys Targaryen will hatch three dragons in the Dothraki Sea and raise them to be the Black Dread come again." Sansa leaned forwards and took Arya's hands in hers. "We know about the things that no one else will be able to see coming. I know who Littlefinger is, but as far as he knows, I'm a sheltered little dove who knows nothing of the world. I can handle him."

Arya still looked doubtful, but she rose, dragging Sansa up with her. "We should tell Father," she said. "Mother, too. They can help."

"They won't believe us," said Sansa flatly, dropping Arya's hands.

"They will if we can prove it," insisted Arya. "You spent time in the Eyrie; you can tell Father all about the castle. I've ridden through the Riverlands. We know people who we've never met. We both know things about dragons and about the Others that Old Nan won't have told us."

"What happened to us is impossible, Arya," said Sansa. "They don't know anything of magic, not really. Just the old stories that Old Nan tells us, and Mother thinks they're nursery tales made to scare children, and Father thinks they're about things that died out years and years and years ago."

"Then we can send ravens to Uncle Benjen," said Arya. "It can't be that long, from the look of you, until that deserter came through talking about the Others. If we can at least convince him to investigate, he can tell Mother and Father that we're right about the Others and they won't be able to ignore us any longer."

Sansa pursed her lips, unconvinced. She couldn't see anyway to convince her father – let alone her mother, who thought that the Others were as real as grumpkins – of the Others, not when she had barely believed a castle full of the Night's Watch and wildlings telling her, not when she had struggled to believe in magic even after she saw the scars cutting across Jon's chest. There had been a part of her that was expecting the dragons to be overgrown curiosities until they had soared over the walls of Winterfell, and the Others to still be a fairy story until they had assembled outside Winterfell right before the end.

And even if they believed that – would they believe in the people their childhood friends had become? Would Ned believe how the Demon of the Trident was dead already, with Robert having given himself over to all of his flaws? Would Catelyn believe the evil that Littlefinger was capable of, or would Catelyn try to find ways of rationalising or justifying his actions so that he could still be the little boy in Riverrun?

"It'll be safer to work in the shadows," she said, instead, because she doubted that she could sway Arya on the matter of their parents' belief. "If people like Cersei or Varys or Littlefinger can track any interference back to us, then we're in danger."

Arya rolled her eyes. "Sansa, look at us. You aren't the Lady of Winterfell anymore. How are you planning on affecting what's happening in King's Landing as what looks like -" Arya quickly swept her gaze over Sansa critically – "a twelve year old girl in Winterfell?"

"Father tried playing the game, and he died for it," snapped Sansa. "If we get him involved, we can't protect him."

Arya worried her lower lip thoughtfully. "We can't protect him from Joffrey," said Arya, eventually. "Joffrey is mad; he'll break any script we set for him eventually. If we tell Mother and Father, then they have warning of what we'll be dealing with."

Sansa set her jaw and looked behind her at the face of the heart tree. Is this what you wanted? she wondered. Were we only meant to be the three blasts of the horn, nothing more?

She closed her eyes and turned her head back to Arya. "Forewarned is forearmed," she murmured to herself.

"Exactly!" exclaimed Arya. Sansa opened her eyes to see Arya turning away, ready to move inside. Sansa grabbed at her hand again and pulled her back.

"Arya," she said, not certain where to begin. "Can we… Can we just have this morning? Just a regular morning with our brothers. We can see Robb and Rickon and Bran again." She almost regretted including Bran – he had still been alive – but he hadn't been Bran, had he? Bran had said as much multiple times.

Arya stared at her for a long moment before nodding slowly. "We can tell Father that we need to talk to him at breakfast," said Arya. "But he won't have time to talk to us for a little while at least, anyway."

Sansa followed Arya back into the castle. Nervous excitement ate at her stomach, and she couldn't help glancing into every room, down every hallway, soaking in the Winterfell of their youth. She trailed her hands over the stone walls, rough and cool under her hands. They passed Ser Rodrik in the training yard, setting up for the morning in the training yard, and Maester Luwin in the corridors by the Great Hall. Sansa's heart was hammering furiously in her chest by the time they reached the doors to the Great Hall.

"Ready?" whispered Arya.

Robb was behind those doors. Bran and Rickon were behind those doors. Their parents were behind those doors. They would be talking and laughing and they wouldn't know anything about what was coming for them all, but they would be alive.

"I think so," said Sansa, squaring her shoulders.

Arya grabbed the dark steel handle and hesitated. "I'm not – I'm not what they remember, Sansa."

"I know," said Sansa. "You terrified me, coming home and talking about your list of people to kill. You were so different to when we were small." Arya blinked and looked down at the floor, so Sansa hurried on, "But you're still Arya, and just as I'm still Sansa even after everything they did to us. You're the strongest person I've ever met, remember?"

Arya looked up and gave a tiny, jerky nod. With a deep breath, she pushed the doors open. Sansa slipped in behind Arya and looked, instinctively, for Robb, thinking You were going to bring me his head –

She stopped short when she found Robb. He was standing between the High Table and all the others, looking down at his feet in confusion and exasperation – because at his feet was Theon Greyjoy, sobbing and rocking back and forth ever so slightly. Sansa picked up her skirts and ran to Robb's side.

"Reek, reek," garbled Theon between broken sobs. "Rhymes with meek. Reek, reek…"

"Sansa, you should probably go back to your room," said Robb, trying to shift between her and Theon. "Septa Mordane can bring you – and Arya – your breakfast there."

Sansa ignored him, slipping past him and kneeling next to Theon. He hadn't noticed her yet, his hands covering his face. "Theon," she said, as calmly as she could, loud enough for him to hear.

He jerked his head back and forth, insisting "Reek, reek, my name is Reek."

"Your name is Theon Greyjoy," she said more forcefully. "Can you hear me, Theon? Ramsay isn't here. It's only me. It's only Sansa. Ramsay's gone."

Theon had stopped whispering to himself, but sobs were still racking at his shoulders.

"We ran, do you remember?" she said, keeping her voice soothing. "You told me that you would die to get me to the Wall, but you didn't have to. I fed Ramsay to his own dogs, and you came back to me in Winterfell."

Theon peeked at her through the fingers, shoulders slumping as he saw her. "Sansa?" he whispered.

"Look at me, Theon, only at me," she told him, gently taking his hand in hers. "We've got another chance, you and me. Can you feel your fingers?" She ran her hands over them lightly, soft as the first breath of snow.

Theon grasped her hands. "How, Sansa? The Night King was there – there was no one left. I was ready to die for Bran, I was."

Sansa swallowed thickly. "I think you did, Theon. Did you hear a voice, when you woke up? Did you hear Bran?"

Theon nodded slowly. "He told me to fulfil my oaths."

"I died, too," she said. "The dead rose in the crypts, and then I woke up in my own bed, and Bran was telling me that I had to keep Westeros safe. We have a second chance at everything, Theon. Ramsay won't ever touch either of us, not this time."

"Don't think that I'll forget." Sansa glanced up to see Arya behind her, glaring down at Theon. He cringed into Sansa's side.

"Not now, Arya," hissed Sansa.

"No," snapped Arya. "He still did it. He made those choices. I won't forget it."

Sansa squeezed Theon's hands comfortingly, and said, "He did make those choices, just like I still made those choices to go to Cersei back in King's Landing. I lived with that every day of my life, just as Theon lived with what he did and what was done to him." She brushed her fingers over Theon's, a gentle reminder that he was here with her, not in the dungeons of the Dreadfort. "We have a second chance to make better decisions, Arya, all three of us. It was Bran he did wrong, not you or me, and evidently Bran thought he was worth saving."

Arya hissed, air escaping between her gritted teeth. She knelt down to be level with Theon, forcing him to meet her eyes. "I trust my brother," she said. "But if you do a single thing to hurt anybody in this castle, I will gut you. Do you hear me? There won't be anywhere you can run from me."

"That's enough," snapped Sansa. "We're going to have to work together, Arya. We can't be at each other's throats the whole time."

Arya looked back to Theon. "Just so long as we understand each other," she said with false calmness, and stood up in a fluid motion. Then, in shock, Arya exclaimed, "Father!"

Sansa looked up. Ned Stark was standing over them, his expression dark. She had been so wrapped up in Theon that she hadn't even noticed him approach, and she had no idea how much he had heard. Standing shoulder to shoulder with her father, though, was Robb – and he certainly had heard every word. Sansa bit back several choice, uncharacteristic curse words; Gods knew that Robb – good, decent, honourable, impulsive Robb – was the last person they needed to hear about their situation right now. But it was all her fault: in her rush to comfort Theon, to pull him out of the dark place she had barely escaped entering only an hour earlier, she had forgotten her brother entirely. At the High Table, though still close enough to overhear them, was Catelyn, who was watching all three as if she didn't recognise any of them.

Sansa let go of one of Theon's hands so that they could stand, but held the other fast, keeping him anchored in the here and now with her. He tried to let go as Robb's eyes latched on to their joined hands, but she held on stubbornly, lifting her chin defiantly at her brother. She had no need for his protection.

Ned looked between the three of them, taking in each of their expressions, before he said, "I believe that we need to talk."

AN: me pre-season 8: I can't write got fic, it's too stressful, there's too many moving parts
me post-season 8: well I can do better than thAT